A Deep Deceit (5 page)

Carl flung an arm round my shoulders and pulled me close to him. ‘C'mon, let's go home,' he said, the usual gentle teasing note back in his voice. ‘Ghosts aren't allowed in Rose Cottage. I've banned them.'

We both knew that could never be quite true. Carl had been as disturbed as me by the curious damage to our van. I was well aware of that in spite of his gallant attempts to conceal his unease. As we carried on walking up the hill the sun continued to blaze, casting deep, dark shadows in the narrow streets. In one of those places where I knew there was a convenient gap between the buildings I turned to look back over the rooftops to the sea. A figure disappeared abruptly into a doorway. For a moment I wondered if someone was following us. I gave myself a silent dressing down for being paranoid. The water in St Ives bay still shimmered silver and gold, but my heart was no longer singing. All the old fears had invaded me again. I tried desperately to snap out of it, but I couldn't quite.

‘Right, I'll cook supper,' said Carl when we arrived home. ‘Now tell me what would be madame's fancy, then get out of my kitchen.'

As a rule I loved him cooking for me. He was a good cook and had the knack of turning our meals together into an event, but that night I somehow didn't want him to.

‘I'll cook,' I said. ‘It will give me something to do . . .'

He didn't press the point. He knew what I meant. I was hoping that being busy would stop me from dwelling on matters I preferred to forget. We had somehow not got around to buying any fresh food so I made spaghetti bolognaise with tins of minced meat and tomatoes. We always had plenty of garlic and onions. Too late I realised that there was no fresh parmesan in the fridge. Neither of us liked the dried-up powdered stuff you can buy in drums, so we had none of that to use as an emergency stand-in either. One way and another it was not the best spag-bog I had ever made, but if Carl noticed he gave no sign.

‘Right, I'll wash up, then how about an early night?' he suggested after we had finished eating.

I knew he wanted to make love to me, and I had no intention of rejecting him, even though I did not think it would work – not for me, at any rate. And it didn't. I couldn't concentrate. I derived some comfort from his closeness, I could never fail to do that, and from the familiar intimacy when he took me into the bathroom, as he always did afterwards, and we washed together beneath the shower. But later I was afraid to sleep. Carl was as gentle and understanding as ever. Yet, for hours after he had gone to sleep, I lay wide awake, trying not to toss and turn so much that I disturbed him.

I felt quite sure that when I did sleep I would have a nightmare. Such premonitions were not unusual, however much I fought against them, and almost always came true. This night was no exception. I was aware that maybe I half brought it on myself, but there seemed nothing I could do about it and the vivid detail was so overwhelming that I had no awareness that I was dreaming, that I was in fact asleep.

Instead I was caught in a terrible biting reality which took over my whole being. I felt the pain, smelled the blood, sensed the pleasure that came first and hated myself for it.

His arms were around me, his lips seeking mine, then kissing and nibbling my ears, my neck, my breasts. Methodically, efficiently.

The warm glow of arousal became a burning at the very core of me. He entered me, gently but forcefully pushing himself deep deep into me, as far as possible into the essence of my body.

My eyes were tightly closed, as if the lids were glued together and I could not open them. It did not matter. This was not really lovemaking, just clinically executed sex. But that did not matter either. The physical sensation was everything, all that existed.

The tingling sensation inside me rose and rose until the moment of climax burst upon me and I could feel great waves of pleasure rushing through my body. Then – it was always then, at that moment, at the beginning of my coming – he hit me.

I felt the flat of his left palm smash into the side of my face with a force so great that it almost broke my jaw. My cries of pleasure turned into screams of pain as with his other hand he made a fist and punched me full in the chest, the belly and then again the face, all the time pushing himself into me.

The gentle nibbling and kissing turned into a cruel biting and my breasts started to bleed, but there could be no escape until he had reached his climax. Always it was like that, he would raise himself triumphantly from me and eventually the blows would stop.

But then came the worst moment. Just like in all these terrible dreams, the moment I dreaded more than the pain that was so real, more than the blood and the brutality. The moment when I could eventually open my eyes, when I could not stop them opening, in fact, and I had to see again the black hole where his face should be.

That was the moment when my screams reached their loudest, that was the moment when Carl coaxed me into some kind of wakefulness and for the umpteenth time held me tight while I hit and kicked out at him as he willed me to be still, so patiently, so tenderly calming me.

‘The dreams will go away, one day they will,' he said. ‘I'll make them, my darling, I'll make them.'

I lay in his arms still weeping, trembling. So many times he had told me that. So many times I had wanted it to be true. And this time I really had thought it could have happened. ‘They had gone away, I believed they might have gone away for good,' I sobbed. ‘It was the van. It was just so horrid. I can't help feeling that it was a message . . .'

‘I know, honey,' he whispered. ‘I was so afraid that would bring it all back. But try not to worry, my darling. It must have been kids. It cannot really be a threat to us. It just can't . . .'

Somehow he gentled me so much that I actually managed a few minutes' fitful sleep before morning.

Perhaps the sleep helped. One way and another I didn't feel quite as bad the next morning as I had expected. The nightmare remained vivid enough. I could always remember every detail when I woke up, that was one of the worst aspects of it, but it was another bright sunny day.

Unusually, I got up before Carl. I made tea and took him a cup in bed, just as he was waking.

There was anxiety in his eyes as I leaned over him and kissed his forehead, but he could always sense my state of mind, my mood. I knew he recognised that I was really quite calm considering what I had been through in the night.

Later that day, Carl bought a can of red spray paint and some fine sandpaper and did a pretty good job of removing all but a trace of the words crudely scratched on to the van.

It was a great tribute to him and, I suppose, to the power of our love that I was able to return quite quickly to some kind of normality. I think I even convinced myself that the words on our old van really had been nothing other than meaningless vandalism.

Four

Another four months passed without a nightmare and much of the old day-to-day happiness and contentment returned. Carl's and my life together was simple and intimate, our pleasures thoroughly unsophisticated. He had his work. I had my pride in his work. We never tired of exploring the beautiful county that was our home. We liked to walk together along the clifftops and beaches, and inland through the woods and meadows, particularly in the spring when we sought out the special places where the bluebells and the daffodils and primroses carpeted the ground. We had our shared love of fine art, we enjoyed cooking and eating good food together and we delighted in each other's company. We laughed a lot. Carl could always make me laugh. We were so comfortable together.

It was surprisingly easy to forget our suspicions that something sinister lay behind the damage to the van. And in spite of that this four-month gap was the second longest period I had been without a nightmare since our arrival in St Ives.

However, I abandoned the idea of applying for a job. Instead I buried myself in the familiarly safe cocoon of my life with Carl. Once again the world outside us seemed full of danger.

My friendship with Mariette developed over the summer, which, in spite of such a promising start, had generally been cooler than usual for St Ives. Occasionally I joined her for a lunchtime snack in a café or, on the brighter days, sandwiches eaten sitting on the sea wall dodging gulls and tourists, both of which could be infuriating.

It was the summer of the total eclipse. Carl and I watched it together from St Ives Head, the rocky piece of land jutting out to sea to the south of the harbour and always known to the locals as ‘The Island' because that is what it looks like from most parts of the town, although it is in fact joined to the mainland by a wide, grass-covered causeway.

We were disappointed in the weather, of course. Both the day before and the day after the eclipse were gloriously sunny, but not that special Wednesday. We woke up to a damp, murky morning, but nonetheless set off to the island good and early, in order to secure a prime cliff-edge spot. There we stood, along with hundreds of other disappointed eclipse watchers, feeling vaguely ridiculous as we stared glumly at a completely cloud-laden sky. Then, minutes before totality, the clouds parted and there, quite clearly revealed, was a crescent of sun, the rest of it covered by the moon. It was stunning, and by then, unexpected. The gathered crowd collectively gasped. Then there was an outbreak of clapping. Then a sort of communal rustling sound as we all obediently reached for our special eclipse glasses. Then almost everyone gathered on the island began to laugh. The partially eclipsed sun, although clearly visible, was still covered in a film of light cloud. Through our black safety glasses all any of us could see was a reflection of our own faces.

The atmosphere was extraordinary, quite carnival-like. But when the moment of totality came the laughter stopped abruptly. All of us had been prepared for a couple of minutes of darkness in the middle of the day; we knew well enough what was going to happen, but when it happened it was still a shock.

I clasped Carl's hand tightly. We did not speak. Nobody spoke. The enormity of the moment was overwhelming. The lights of St Ives switched on and above the town a display of fireworks flashed across the blackness. It was weird. At first there was silence and then the sky filled with hysterical seagulls. Confused and bewildered, they went absolutely mad, wheeling and screeching in their hundreds. As the sky began to lighten so their cries became less frenzied. The birds understood that something extraordinary had happened, every bit as much as the humans had.

I pulled my jacket closer around me. The temperature had dropped dramatically during the eclipse, just as it does at night, but it wasn't only that which had chilled me and made me shiver. In the modern air-conditioned world it is easy sometimes to forget the sheer might of nature. I don't think anything has ever reminded me quite as much of the insignificance of the human race as watching the eclipse of the sun on that dull August morning. And to be watching from the heart of Cornwall, this ancient county steeped in legend and mystery, added an extra indefinable magic to the whole experience.

I clutched Carl's hand even more tightly, feeling the tears welling. I can't quite explain why I had been so moved, but there it was.

‘I could murder a pint,' said Carl.

I swung to look at him. He was totally po-faced.

‘You Philistine,' I said. ‘Have you no soul? That was just amazing, wasn't it?'

‘Was it?' he enquired guilelessly.

I made a threatening gesture with the palm of my right hand. I knew he was joking, but even so . . .

Carl relented. ‘Yes, it was amazing,' he said, his face softening. ‘Of course it was. Makes all our problems seem so unimportant, doesn't it?'

I knew exactly what he meant. And I just hoped that our problems would indeed prove to be unimportant.

One way and another the eclipse was the high spot of an indifferent summer, which turned gradually into a mild but exceptionally wet early autumn. During the torrential rain which drenched the south west through almost all of September the roof in our lean-to kitchen sprang a leak again. Carl tried to patch it as best he could. Our absentee landlord hadn't raised our rent for almost three years and we didn't want to jog his memory.

Carl finished several of the abstracts I considered to be quite brilliant. He had taken to using oil pastels rather than paint. They didn't fetch the price of oil paintings, but he could complete them much more quickly and in any case I knew that he enjoyed the medium. Also, the speed with which he could produce in pastels gave his work a spontaneity, which I thought added a distinctive sharpness.

One evening I made pumpkin soup, one of his favourite dishes. I served the soup in deep round bowls, its vivid yellowish-red colour streaked with cream and dotted with chopped chives. Carl enthused as much about the look of it as the taste and as soon as he had finished eating disappeared into his studio, for once telling me not to follow him because he wanted to surprise me. Only three or four hours later he emerged with a splendid three-foot-square painting of my pumpkin soup. On it he had written ‘For Suzanne.' It was the most wonderful present I had ever been given. The next day he framed it for me. We hung it in the dining room and it seemed to transform the room. It remains to this day my favourite of all Carl's paintings, not least for the spirit in which it was painted and given to me.

This was a prolific period for Carl. There was another piece, in brilliant primary colours, which I also thought particularly impressive. It consisted of a striking series of interlocking circular shapes, each one sharply defined in itself and yet also blending to be part of another. He called it
Balloons
.

One afternoon, exceptionally dry and bright for November, we walked together to the Logan Gallery, the little shop up the hill that sold most of Carl's work for him, taking with us
Balloons
and two other recent paintings. The owner, Will Jones, was a quietly spoken former schoolteacher with a real eye, Carl always said. Will had taught art for many years and dreamed of one day becoming a full-time painter himself. That dream never came true. Will said he guessed he'd never been quite good enough, although Carl and I didn't believe he meant it. Artists never did. I had grown to understand that most unsuccessful painters were convinced the only reason they weren't as big as Picasso was that there had been a conspiracy against them. But if Will had that bitterness inside him, at least he didn't show it. Indeed, he insisted that having his own gallery was a good second best for him.